Matt Fowler

It plays into the dystopian fantasy of being able to reinvent yourself in a lawless world, delivering a clever tale about what it takes for someone who's not a part of existence to want to reengage with life.

Derek DelGaudio's In and Of Itself is a beautiful, powerful performance that employs art, illusion, storytelling, and its own audience to explore aspects of identity, isolation, and our own desperate drive to figure out who we are as individuals. There's nothing quite like it, which, as goes the uniqueness of humanity, is the point.

A pleasant surprise that both undermines and elevates typical revenge sagas, Riders of Justice is a unique blend that charms and captivates.

The King is a relevant reshaping of Shakespeare's Henry V featuring a stunning turn by Timothée Chalamet.

I Lost My Body stands as one of the year's best and most profound pieces of animation.

The Croods: A New Age is a mightily medium follow-up to the 2013 original. The voice cast is great and the jokes are the perfect type of clever, where both kids and adults can get a good laugh. The story and emotional stakes are a touch thinner this time but that's to be expected, for the most part, from this type of animated sequel.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a ridiculous, riotous, and relevant adventure fill with great humor and winning sentiment.

The Marksman is perfectly watchable old man reckoning cinema, held together by good performances by Liam Neeson and young Jacob Perez, but it's ultimately not much more than an assembly line of non-surprises.

Extraction works because its simple, yet sufficient, story allows the film's action to take center stage. If the stunt work were mediocre, the entire thing would be an utter waste of time. Thankfully though, Extraction boasts an exhaustingly awesome showcase of expertly choreographed fists, knives, guns, and explosions.

Fyre delivers greatly on the delight in the misfortune of the wealthy and the shallow that we all expect and crave, but it also smartly doesn't hang its hat on it. It's mostly about the actual well-intentioned people involved in this fiasco and how anyone can be suckered into a vision or dream when no one in a collective is willing to speak out as a lone voice of reason.

The Outpost is a cleverly, and respectfully, crafted war film that uses a segmented, episodic approach to help you invest in the characters while building up to a very impressive battle sequence.

This contest of wicked wills is a vibrant, penetrating Pandora's Box of predicaments and likeable yet evil central characters, played with satirical skill by Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage.

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey already feels like a timeless treat. Though it's a little longer than it needs to be, Jingle Jangle is still filled with enticing visuals, holiday heart, and seasonal cheer. It instantly feels like a snug, fabled world ready to be explored.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm may not contain all of the shock and awe of the original, since exposing racists has sadly sort of become commonplace, but it still contains an avalanche of awkward, anxiety-cranking moments that'll have you laughing while watching through your fingers like you would a horror movie.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers isn't the first movie to do what it's doing -- with live-action and animation sharing the screen, helping nurture a meta-comedy adventure -- but it's damn fun and one of the cleverest uses of elder pop culture properties in a while.

Werewolves Within easily separates itself from the pack by delivering a quirky monster mystery filled with gentle laughs and massive maulings. Not every joke lands, and not every character fits, but overall it's an entertaining alternative to the season's more ghoulish and grim offerings.

Krysten Ritter, along with Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett, provide enough pizazz to keep Nightbooks afloat, creating an engaging supernatural hostage scenario.

The Courier is a tense, well-executed spy drama that wisely focuses on character and performance more than thrills, knowing that if we actually care about these men it will drastically heighten every narrowed glance, near miss, and frightful chase. It's not always the freshest adventure, but that's when the acting carries the piece and breathes life into these unlikely heroes.

Sergio Pablos' Klaus is a beautifully animated mix of old and new - offing up a unique and quirky take on Santa's humble beginnings. It's a fun, fresh story about friendship and the power of kindness that coats snowbound cliches with a shiny sheen.

Greyhound has occasional bursts of violent excitement but it's overall lack of engaging characters, the unappetizing CG, and the lackluster story make for a very color-by-numbers outing from a headlining star capable of a whole lot more.

Synchronic isn't a home run, but a decent time travel triple is always welcome.

The Rental boats a strong cast, an intriguing set up, and a compelling mystery. It's a fun and feisty web of lies and deception with the added bonus of having a shadowy, stalking presence surrounding everything and everyone like a God-hand. It's a small film, but it's tense, dense, and delivers a harrowing final act.

Copshop is meaningfully and enjoyably derivative as a patchwork homage to '70s shoot-em-up cinema (even Spaghetti Westerns), but it never quite reaches its potential.

Triple Frontier features a cool cast and a gruesome story about greed, but it fails to capitalize on its own premise.

The Wretched's endeavor to meld a junior mystery with some pretty extreme horror works more than it doesn't, but ultimately neither side of this narrative coin gets explored as much as it should. Despite this, as a well shot and admirably executed thriller, it's a good entry into the catalogue of on-the-cheap scares.

Zeros and Ones uses the spy genre as a thin mask for a fever dream that evokes nightmarish uncertainty.

The film's a fun and humble horror offering set among the world of pretension and status.